'Melisselogia. Or, the female monarchy. Being an enquiry into the nature, order, and government of bees, those admirable, instructive and useful insects. With a new, easy, and effectual method to preserve them, not only in colonies, but common hives, from that cruel death, to which their ignorant, injurious, and most ingrateful owners so commonly condemn them. A Secret uknown to past ages and now published for the benefit of Mankind. Written upon forty years observation and experience by the Reverend Mr John Thorley of Oxon.' 1744[the above plate is obviously copied from the groundbreaking work that included the first sketches of bees using a microscope: Melissographia by Francesco Stelluti in ~1624]

This is arguably the single most influential or at least important apiculture book ever released in the english language. Butler conclusively overturned the prevailing myth of bee patriarchy (note the 'Rex' in the Rusden illustration above) by identifying the Queen as female ruler and the drones as male. [the theory was more fully elucidated later by Jan Swammerdam]

The background to this music sheet image is quite extraordinary. Butler was attempting to transcribe bee sounds in musical notation. What began as a simple triplicate metre representation of rival queen bee sounds in the first edition was augmented later to become a madrigal [multi-voice unaccompanied by music] for 4 singers with the music appearing in such a way (click to enlarge) that a soprano and tenor on one side of the page could read the music at the same time as the countertenor and bassus on the opposite side. {The enigmatic Butler also included original grammatical inventions in his books (that are annoying to some)}.

'Oeconomische Encyclopädie' by Johann Georg Krünitz, 1774 .

This is one of four sketches [touched up] produced by EJ Detmold as anaccompaniment to the first childrens' version of Maurice Maeterlinck'sphilosophical treatise about bees 'La Vie des Abeilles" (The Life of Bees).[There is a later version called 'News of Spring' - or it's a compilation -with about 20 - what looks like - gorgeous Detmold illustrations {addit: more Detmold insect illustrations here}]

These are simply a selection of images from historical books on apiculture and aren't intended to represent the most important works necessarily. As is always the case in a subject review here, finding suitable images is the first priority and obviously the most significant books aren't always filled with the greatest artwork. There is a relative overabundance of german works for no other reason than as a rationalisation to myself for having blindly downloaded somewhere north of 1/2 gigabyte of pdf books.

Mann Library at Cornell University is said to house the largest and most valuable collection of bee/apiculture literature in the world -- 'The Hive and the Honeybee' digital collection of apiculture books are all unfortunately in photocopy format. 'A Buzz about Bees' is an exhibition site featuring bee literature from the last 400 years.